[1] The history of the word "leet" is very obscure. It appears in
Anglo-French documents as _lete_ and in Anglo-Latin as _leta_.
Professor W. W. Skeat has connected it with Old English _laetan_, to
let, which is very doubtful, though this is the origin of the use of
the word in such expressions as "two-" "three-way leet," a place
where cross-roads meet. The _New English Dictionary_ suggests a
connexion with "lathe," a term which survives as a division of the
county of Kent, containing several "hundreds." This is of Old
Norwegian origin, and seems to have meant "landed possessions." There
is also another Old Norwegian _leith_, a court or judicial assembly,
and modern Danish has _laegd_, a division of the country for military
purposes. J. H. Round (_Feudal England_, p. 101) points out that the
Suffolk hundred was divided for assessment into equal blocks called
"leets" (see further F. W. Maitland, _Select Pleas in Manorial
Courts_, Selden Soc. Publications I. lxxiii-lxxvi). "Leet" is also
used, chiefly in Scotland, for a list of persons nominated for
election to an office. This is, apparently, a shortened form of the
French _elite_, elected.
COURT-MARTIAL, a court for the trial of offences against military or
naval discipline, or for the administration of martial law. In England
courts-martial have inherited part of the jurisdiction of the old _Curia
militaris_, or court of the chivalry, in which a single marshal and at
one time the high constable proceeded "according to the customs and
usages of that court, and, in cases omitted according to the civil law,
_secundum legem armorum_" (Coke, 4 _Ins._ 17). The modern form of the
courts was adopted by ordinance in the time of Charles I., when English
soldiers were studying the "articles and military laws" of Gustavus
Adolphus and the Dutch military code of Arnheim; it is first recognized
by statute in the first Mutiny Act of 1689. The Mutiny Act (with various
extensions and amendments) and the statutory articles of war continued
to be the sources of military law which courts-martial administered
until 1879, when they were codified in the Army Discipline and
Regulation Act 1879, which was, in turn, superseded by the Army Act
1881. This act is re-enacted annually by the Army (Annual) Act. The
constitution of courts-martial, their procedure, &c., are dealt with
under MILITARY LAW.
_Naval Courts-Martial._--The administration of the barbarous naval law
of England was long entrusted to the discretion of commanders acting
under instructions from the lord high admiral, who was supreme over both
the royal and merchant navy. It was the leaders of the Long Parliament
who first secured something like a regular tribunal by passing in 1645
an ordinance and articles concerning martial law for the government of
the navy. Under this ordinance Blake, Monk and Penn issued instructions
for the holding general and ship courts-martial with written records,
the one for captains and commanders, the other for subordinate officers
and men. Of the latter the mate, gunner and boatswain were members, but
the admirals reserved a control over the more serious sentences. Under
an act of 1661 the high admiral again received power to issue
commissions for holding courts-martial--a power which continues to be
exercised by the board of admiralty. During the 18th century, under the
auspices of Anson, the jurisdiction was greatly extended, and the
Consolidation Act of 1749 was passed in which the penalty of death
occurs as frequently as the curses in the commination service. The Naval
Articles of War have always been statutory, and the whole system may now
be said to rest on the Naval Discipline Act 1866, as amended by the act
of 1884. The navy has its courts of inquiry for the confidential
investigation of charges "derogatory to the character of an officer and
a gentleman." Under the act of 1866 a court-martial must consist of from
five to nine officers of a certain rank, and must be held publicly on
board of one of H.M. ships of war, and where at least two such ships are
together. The rank of the president depends on that of the prisoner. A
judge-advocate attends, and the procedure resembles that in military
courts, except that the prisoner is not asked to plead, and the
sentence, if not one of death, does not require the confirmation of the
commander-in-chief abroad or of the admiralty at home. The court has a
large and useful power of finding the prisoner guilty of a less serious
offence than that charged, which might well be imitated in the ordinary
criminal courts. The death sentence is always carried out by hanging at
the yard-arm; Admiral Byng, however, was shot in 1757. The board of
admiralty have, under the Naval Discipline Acts, a general power of
suspending, annulling, and modifying sentences which are not capital.
The jurisdiction extends to all persons belonging to the navy, to land
forces and other passengers on board, shipwrecked crews, spies, persons
borne on the books of H.M. ships in commission, and civilians on board
who endeavour to seduce others from allegiance. The definition of the
jurisdiction by locality includes harbours, havens or creeks, lakes or
rivers, in or out of the United Kingdom; all places within the
jurisdiction of the admiralty; all places on shore out of the United
Kingdom; the dockyards, barracks, hospitals, &c., of the service
wherever situated; all places on shore in or out of the United Kingdom
for all offences punishable under the Articles of War except those
specified in section 38 of the Naval Discipline Act 1860, which are
punishable by ordinary law. The Royal Marines, while borne on the books
of H.M. ships, are subject to the Naval Discipline Acts, and, by an
order in council, 1882, when they are embarked on board ship for service
on shore; otherwise they are under the Army Acts. By s. 179, sub.-sec.
7, of the Army Act, in the application of the act to the Royal Marines
the admiralty is substituted for military authorities.
AUTHORITIES.--Simmons, _On the Constitution and Practice of
Courts-Martial_; Clode, _Military and Martial Law_; Stephens, Gifford
and Smith, _Manual of Naval Law and Court-Martial Procedure_. The
earlier writers on courts-martial are Adye (1796), M'Arthur (1813),
Maltby (1813, Boston), James (1820), D'Aguilar (1843), and Hough,
_Precedents in Military Law_ (1855).
COURTNEY, LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY, BARON (1832- ), English politician
and man of letters, eldest son of J. S. Courtney, a banker, was born at
Penzance on the 6th of July 1832. At Cambridge, Leonard Courtney was
second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, and was elected a fellow of
his college, St John's. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in
1858, was professor of political economy at University College from 1872
to 1875, and in December 1876, after a previous unsuccessful attempt,
was elected to parliament for Liskeard in the Liberal interest. He
continued to represent the borough, and the district into which it was
merged by the Reform Act of 1885, until 1900, when his attitude towards
the South African War--he was one of the foremost of the so-called
"Pro-Boer" party--compelled his retirement. Until 1885 he was a devoted
adherent of Mr Gladstone, particularly in finance and foreign affairs.
In 1880 he was under-secretary of state for the home department, in 1881
for the colonies, and in 1882 secretary to the treasury; but he was
always a stubborn fighter for principle, and upon finding that the
government's Reform Bill in 1884 contained no recognition of the scheme
for proportional representation, to which he was deeply committed, he
resigned office. He refused to support Mr Gladstone's Home Rule Bill in
1885, and was one of those who chiefly contributed to its rejection, and
whose reputation for unbending integrity and intellectual eminence gave
solidity to the Liberal Unionist party. In 1886 he was elected chairman
of committees in the House of Commons, and his efficiency in this office
seemed to mark him out for the speakership in 1895. A Liberal Unionist,
however, could only be elected by Conservative votes, and he had made
himself objectionable to a large section of the party by his independent
attitude on various questions, on which his Liberalism outweighed his
party loyalty. He would in any case have been incapacitated by an
affection of the eyesight, which for a while threatened to withdraw him
from public life altogether. After 1895 Mr Courtney's divergences from
the Unionist party on questions other than Irish politics became
gradually more marked. He became known in the House of Commons
principally for his candid criticism of the measures introduced by his
nominal leaders, and he was rather to be ranked among the Opposition
than as a Ministerialist; and when the crisis with the Transvaal came
in 1899, Mr Courtney's views, which remained substantially what they
were when he supported the settlement after Majuba in 1881, had plainly
become incompatible with his position even as a nominal follower of Lord
Salisbury and Mr Chamberlain. He gradually reverted to formal membership
of the Liberal party, and in January 1906 unsuccessfully contested a
division of Edinburgh as a supporter of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at
the general election. Among the birthday honours of 1906 he was elevated
to the peerage as Baron Courtney of Penwith (Cornwall). Lord Courtney,
who in 1883 married Miss Catherine Potter (an elder sister of Mrs Sidney
Webb), was a prominent supporter of the women's movement. In earlier
years he was a regular contributor to _The Times_, and he wrote numerous
essays in the principal reviews on political and economic subjects. In
1901 he published a book on _The Working Constitution of the United
Kingdom_.
Two of his brothers, John Mortimer Courtney (b. 1838), and William
Prideaux Courtney (b. 1845), also attained public distinction, the
former in the government service in Canada (from 1869, retiring in
1906), rising to be deputy-minister of finance, and the latter in the
British civil service (1865-1892), and as a prominent man of letters and
bibliographer.
COURTOIS, JACQUES (1621-1676) and GUILLAUME (1628-1679). The two French
painters who bore these names are also called by the Italian equivalents
Giacomo (or Jacopo) Cortese and Guglielmo Cortese. Each of the brothers
is likewise named, from his native province, Le Bourguignon, or Il
Borgognone.
Jacques Courtois was born at St Hippolyte, near Besancon, in 1621. His
father was a painter, and with him Jacques remained studying up to the
age of fifteen. Towards 1637 he came to Italy, was hospitably received
at Milan by a Burgundian gentleman, and entered, and for three years
remained in, the French military service. The sight of some
battle-pictures revived his taste for fine art. He went to Bologna, and
studied under the friendly tutelage of Guido; thence he proceeded to
Rome, where he painted, in the Cistercian monastery, the "Miracle of the
Loaves." Here he took a house and after a while entered upon his own
characteristic style of art, that of battle-painting, in which he has
been accounted to excel all other old masters; his merits were cordially
recognized by the celebrated Cerquozzi, named Michelangelo delle
Battaglie. He soon rose from penury to ease, and married a painter's
beautiful daughter, Maria Vagini; she died after seven years of wedded
life. Prince Matthias of Tuscany employed Courtois on some striking
works in his villa, Lappeggio, representing with much historical
accuracy the prince's military exploits. In Venice also the artist
executed for the senator Sagredo some remarkable battle-pieces. In
Florence he entered the Society of Jesus, taking the habit in Rome in
1655; it was calumniously rumoured that he adopted this course in order
to escape punishment for having poisoned his wife. As a Jesuit father,
Courtois painted many works in churches and monasteries of the society.
He lived piously in Rome, and died there of apoplexy on the 20th of May
1676 (some accounts say 1670 or 1671). His battle-pieces have movement
and fire, warm colouring (now too often blackened), and great command of
the brush,--those of moderate dimensions are the more esteemed. They are
slight in execution, and tell out best from a distance. Courtois etched
with skill twelve battle-subjects of his own composition. The Dantzig
painter named in Italy Pandolfo Reschi was his pupil.
Guillaume Courtois, born likewise at St Hippolyte, came to Italy with
his brother. He went at once to Rome, and entered the school of Pietro
da Cortona. He studied also the Bolognese painters and Giovanni
Barbieri, and formed for himself a style with very little express
mannerism, partly resembling that of Maratta. He painted the "Battle of
Joshua" in the Quirinal Gallery, the "Crucifixion of St Andrew" in the
church of that saint on Monte Cavallo, various works for the Jesuits,
some also in co-operation with his brother. His last production was
Christ admonishing Martha. His draughtsmanship is better than that of
Jacques, whom he did not, however, rival in spirit, colour or
composition. He also executed some etchings. Guillaume Courtois died of
gout on the 15th of June 1679.
COURTRAI (Flemish, _Kortryk_), an important and once famous town of West
Flanders, Belgium, situated on the Lys. Pop. (1904) 34,564. It is now
best known for its fine linen, which ranks with that of Larne. The lace
factories are also important and employ 5000 hands. But considerable as
is the prosperity of modern Courtrai it is but a shadow of what it was
in the middle ages during the halcyon period of the Flemish communes.
Then Courtrai had a population of 200,000, now it is little over a sixth
of that number. On the 11th of July 1302 the great battle of Courtrai
(see INFANTRY) was fought outside its walls, when the French army, under
the count of Artois, was vanquished by the allied burghers of Bruges,
Ypres and Courtrai with tremendous loss. As many as 700 pairs of golden
spurs were collected on the field from the bodies of French knights and
hung up as an offering in an abbey church of the town, which has long
disappeared. There are still, however, some interesting remains of
Courtrai's former grandeur. Perhaps the Pont de Broel, with its towers
at either end of the bridge, is as characteristic and complete as any
monument of ancient Flanders that has come down to modern times. The
hotel de ville, which dated from the earlier half of the 16th century,
was restored in 1846, and since then statues have also been added to
represent those that formerly ornamented the facade. Two richly and
elaborately carved chimney-pieces in the hotel de ville merit special
notice. The one in the council chamber upstairs dates from 1527 and
gives an allegorical representation of the Virtues and the Vices. The
other, three-quarters of a century later, contains an heraldic
representation of the noble families of the town. The church of St
Martin dates from the 15th century, but was practically destroyed in
1862 by a fire caused by lightning. It has been restored. The most
important building at Courtrai is the church of Notre Dame, which was
begun by Count Baldwin IX. in 1191 and finished in 1211. The portal and
the choir were reconstructed in the 18th century. In the chapel behind
the choir is hung one of Van Dyck's masterpieces, "The Erection of the
Cross." The chapel of the counts attached to the church dates from 1373,
and contained mural paintings of the counts and countesses of Flanders
down to the merging of the title in the house of Burgundy. Most if not
all of these had become obliterated, but they have now been carefully
restored. With questionable judgment portraits have been added of the
subsequent holders of the title down to the emperor Francis II. (I. of
Austria), the last representative of the houses of Flanders and Burgundy
to rule in the Netherlands. Courtrai celebrated the 600th anniversary of
the battle mentioned above by erecting a monument on the field in 1902,
and also by fetes and historical processions that continued for a
fortnight.
Courtrai, the _Cortracum_ of the Romans, ranked as a town from the 7th
century onwards. It was destroyed by the Normans, but was rebuilt in the
10th century by Baldwin III. of Flanders, who endowed it with market
rights and laid the foundation of its industrial importance by inviting
the settlement of foreign weavers. The town was once more burnt, in
1382, by the French after the battle of Roosebeke, but was rebuilt in
1385 by Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy.
COURVOISIER, JEAN JOSEPH ANTOINE (1775-1835), French magistrate and
politician, was born at Besancon on the 30th of November 1775. During
the revolutionary period he left the country and served in the army of
the _emigres_ and later in that of Austria. In 1801, under the
Consulate, he returned to France and established himself as an advocate
at Besancon, being appointed _conseiller-auditeur_ to the court of
appeal there in 1808. At the Restoration he was made advocate-general by
Louis XVIII., resigned and left France during the Hundred Days, and was
reappointed after the second Restoration in 1815. In 1817, after the
modification of the constitution by the _ordonnance_ of the 5th of
September, he was returned to the chamber of deputies, where he attached
himself to the left centre and supported the moderate policy of
Richelieu and Decazes. He was an eloquent speaker, and master of many
subjects; and his proved royalism made it impossible for the
ultra-Royalists to discredit him, much as they resented his consistent
opposition to their short-sighted violence. After the revolt at Lyons
in 1817 he was nominated _procureur-general_ of the city, and by his
sense and moderation did much to restore order and confidence. He was
again a member of the chamber from 1819 to 1824, and vigorously opposed
the exceptional legislation which the second administration of Richelieu
passed under the influence of the ultra-Royalists. In 1824 he failed to
secure re-election, and occupied himself with his judicial duties until
his nomination as councillor of state in 1827. On the 8th of August 1829
he accepted the offer of the portfolio of justice in the Polignac
ministry, but resigned on the 19th of May 1830, when he realized that
the government intended to abrogate the Charter and the inevitable
revolution that would follow. During the trial of the ex-ministers, in
December, he was summoned as a witness, and paid a tribute to the
character of his former colleagues which, under the circumstances,
argued no little courage. He refused to take office under Louis
Philippe, and retired into private life, dying on the 18th of September
1835.
COUSCOUS, or KOUS-KOUS (an Arabic word derived from _kaskasa_, to
pound), a dish common among the inhabitants of North Africa, made of
flour rubbed together and steamed over a stew of mutton, fowl, &c., with
which it is eaten.
COUSIN, JEAN (1500-1590), French painter, was born at Soucy, near Sens,
and began as a glass-painter, his windows in the Sainte Chapelle at
Vincennes being considered the finest in France. As a painter of subject
pictures he is ranked as the founder of the French school, as having
first departed from the practice of portraits. His "Last Judgment,"
influenced by Parmigiano, is in the Louvre, and a "Descent from the
Cross" (1523) in the museum at Mainz is attributed to him. He was known
also as a sculptor, and an engraver, both in etching and on wood, his
wood-cuts for Jean le Clerc's Bible (1596) and other books being his
best-known work. He also wrote a _Livre de perspective_ (1560), and a
_Livre de portraiture_ (1571).
See Ambroise Firmin-Didot, _Etude sur J. Cousin_ (1872), and _Recueil
des oeuvres choisies de J. Cousin_ (1873).
COUSIN, VICTOR (1792-1867), French philosopher, the son of a watchmaker,
was born in Paris, in the Quartier St Antoine, on the 28th of November
1792. At the age of ten he was sent to the grammar school of the
Quartier St Antoine, the Lycee Charlemagne. Here he studied until he was
eighteen. The lycee had a connexion with the university, and when Cousin
left the secondary school he was "crowned" in the ancient hall of the
Sorbonne for the Latin oration delivered by him there, in the general
concourse of his school competitors. The classical training of the lycee
strongly disposed him to literature. He was already known among his
compeers for his knowledge of Greek. From the lycee he passed to the
Normal School of Paris, where Laromiguiere was then lecturing on
philosophy. In the second preface to the _Fragmens philosophiques_, in
which he candidly states the varied philosophical influences of his
life, Cousin speaks of the grateful emotion excited by the memory of the
day in 1811, when he heard Laromiguiere for the first time. "That day
decided my whole life. Laromiguiere taught the philosophy of Locke and
Condillac, happily modified on some points, with a clearness and grace
which in appearance at least removed difficulties, and with a charm of
spiritual _bonhomie_ which penetrated and subdued." Cousin was set
forthwith to lecture on philosophy, and he speedily obtained the
position of master of conferences (_maitre de conferences_) in the
school. The second great philosophical impulse of his life was the
teaching of Royer-Collard. This teacher, as he tells us, "by the
severity of his logic, the gravity and weight of his words, turned me by
degrees, and not without resistance, from the beaten path of Condillac
into the way which has since become so easy, but which was then painful
and unfrequented, that of the Scottish philosophy." In 1815-1816 Cousin
attained the position of _suppleant_ (assistant) to Royer-Collard in the
history of modern philosophy chair of the faculty of letters. There was
still another thinker who influenced him at this early period,--Maine de
Biran, whom Cousin regarded as the unequalled psychological observer of
his time in France.
These men strongly influenced both the method and the matter of Cousin's
philosophical thought. To Laromiguiere he attributes the lesson of
decomposing thought, even though the reduction of it to sensation was
inadequate. Royer-Collard taught him that even sensation is subject to
certain internal laws and principles which it does not itself explain,
which are superior to analysis and the natural patrimony of the mind. De
Biran made a special study of the phenomena of the will. He taught him
to distinguish in all cognitions, and especially in the simplest facts
of consciousness, the fact of voluntary activity, that activity in which
our personality is truly revealed. It was through this "triple
discipline," as he calls it, that Cousin's philosophical thought was
first developed, and that in 1815 he entered on the public teaching of
philosophy in the Normal School and in the faculty of letters.[1] He
then took up the study of German, worked at Kant and Jacobi, and sought
to master the _Philosophy of Nature_ of Schelling, by which he was at
first greatly attracted. The influence of Schelling may be observed very
markedly in the earlier form of his philosophy. He sympathized with the
principle of faith of Jacobi, but regarded it as arbitrary so long as it
was not recognized as grounded in reason. In 1817 he went to Germany,
and met Hegel at Heidelberg. In this year appeared Hegel's _Encyclopadie
der philosophischen Wissenschaften_, of which Cousin had one of the
earliest copies. He thought Hegel not particularly amiable, but the two
became friends. The following year Cousin went to Munich, where he met
Schelling for the first time, and spent a month with him and Jacobi,
obtaining a deeper insight into the _Philosophy of Nature_.
Political troubles.
Fragmens philosophiques.
The political troubles of France interfered for a time with his career.
In the events of 1814-1815 he took the royalist side. He at first
adopted the views of the party known as _doctrinaire_, of which
Royer-Collard was the philosophical chief. He seems then to have gone
farther than his party, and even to have approached the extreme Left.
Then came a reaction against liberalism, and in 1821-1822 Cousin was
deprived of his offices alike in the faculty of letters and in the
Normal School. The Normal School itself was swept away, and Cousin
shared at the hands of a narrow and illiberal government the fate of
Guizot, who was ejected from the chair of history. This enforced
abandonment of public teaching was not wholly an evil. He set out for
Germany with a view to further philosophical study. While at Berlin in
1824-1825 he was thrown into prison, either on some ill-defined
political charge at the instance of the French police, or on account of
certain incautious expressions which he had let fall in conversation.
Liberated after six months, he continued under the suspicion of the
French government for three years. It was during this period, however,
that he thought out and developed what is distinctive in his
philosophical doctrine. His eclecticism, his ontology and his philosophy
of history were declared in principle and in most of their salient
details in the _Fragmens philosophiques_ (Paris, 1826). The preface to
the second edition (1833) and the _Avertissement_ to the third (1838)
aimed at a vindication of his principles against contemporary criticism.
Even the best of his later books, the _Philosophie ecossaise_ (4th ed.,
1863), the _Du vrai, du beau, et du bien_ (12th ed., 1872; Eng. trans.,
3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1854), and the _Philosophie de Locke_ (4th ed.,
1861) were simply matured revisions of his lectures during the period
from 1815 to 1820. The lectures on Locke were first sketched in 1819,
and fully developed in the course of 1829.
During the seven years of enforced abandonment of teaching he produced,
besides the _Fragmens_, the edition of the works of Proclus (6 vols.,
1820-1827), and the works of Descartes (11 vols., 1826). He also
commenced his _Translation of Plato_ (13 vols.), which occupied his
leisure time from 1825 to 1840.
We see in the _Fragmens_ very distinctly the fusion of the different
philosophical influences by which his opinions were finally matured. For
Cousin was as eclectic in thought and habit of mind as he was in
philosophical principle and system. It is with the publication of the
_Fragmens_ of 1826 that the first great widening of his reputation is
associated. In 1827 followed the _Cours de l'histoire de la
philosophie_.
Career as a lecturer.
In 1828 M. de Vatimesnil, minister of public instruction in Martignac's
ministry, recalled Cousin and Guizot to their professorial positions in
the university. The three years which followed were the period of
Cousin's greatest triumph as a lecturer. His return to the chair was the
symbol of the triumph of constitutional ideas and was greeted with
enthusiasm. The hall of the Sorbonne was crowded as the hall of no
philosophical teacher in Paris had been since the days of Abelard. The
lecturer had a singular power of identifying himself for the time with
the system which he expounded and the historical character he portrayed.
Clear and comprehensive in the grasp of the general outlines of his
subject, he was methodical and vivid in the representation of details.
In exposition he had the rare art of unfolding and aggrandizing. There
was a rich, deep-toned, resonant eloquence mingled with the speculative
exposition; his style of expression was clear, elegant and forcible,
abounding in happy turns and striking antitheses. To this was joined a
singular power of rhetorical climax. His philosophy exhibited in a
striking manner the generalizing tendency of the French intellect, and
its logical need of grouping details round central principles.
There was withal a moral elevation in his spiritual philosophy which
came home to the hearts of his hearers, and seemed to afford a ground
for higher development in national literature and art, and even in
politics, than the traditional philosophy of France had appeared capable
of yielding. His lectures produced more ardent disciples, imbued at
least with his spirit, than those of any other professor of philosophy
in France during the 18th century. Tested by the power and effect of his
teaching influence, Cousin occupies a foremost place in the rank of
professors of philosophy, who like Jacobi, Schelling and Dugald Stewart
have united the gifts of speculative, expository and imaginative power.
Tested even by the strength of the reaction which his writings have in
some cases occasioned, his influence is hardly less remarkable. The
taste for philosophy--especially its history--was revived in France to
an extent unknown since the 17th century.
Disciples and followers.
Among the men who were influenced by Cousin we may note T. S. Jouffroy,
J. P. Damiron, Garnier, J. Barthelemy St Hilaire, F. Ravaisson-Mollien,
Remusat, Jules Simon and A. Franck. Jouffroy and Damiron were first
fellow-students and then disciples. Jouffroy, however, always kept firm
to the early--the French and Scottish--impulses of Cousin's teaching.
Cousin continued to lecture regularly for two years and a half after his
return to the chair. Sympathizing with the revolution of July, he was at
once recognized by the new government as a friend of national liberty.
Writing in June 1833 he explains both his philosophical and his
political position:--
"I had the advantage of holding united against me for many years both
the sensational and the theological school. In 1830 both schools
descended into the arena of politics. The sensational school quite
naturally produced the demagogic party, and the theological school
became quite as naturally absolutism, safe to borrow from time to time
the mask of the demagogue in order the better to reach its ends, as in
philosophy it is by scepticism that it undertakes to restore
theocracy. On the other hand, he who combated any exclusive principle
in science was bound to reject also any exclusive principle in the
state, and to defend representative government."
The government was not slow to do him honour. He was induced by the
ministry of which his friend Guizot was the head to become a member of
the council of public instruction and counsellor of state, and in 1832
he was made a peer of France. He ceased to lecture, but retained the
title of professor of philosophy. Finally, he accepted the position of
minister of public instruction in 1840 under Thiers. He was besides
director of the Normal School and virtual head of the university, and
from 1840 a member of the Institute (Academy of the Moral and Political
Sciences). His character and his official position at this period gave
him great power in the university and in the educational arrangements
of the country. In fact, during the seventeen and a half years of the
reign of Louis Philippe, Cousin mainly moulded the philosophical and
even the literary tendencies of the cultivated class in France.
Relation to primary education in France.
But the most important work he accomplished during this period was the
organization of primary instruction. It was to the efforts of Cousin
that France owed her advance, in primary education, between 1830 and
1848. Prussia and Saxony had set the national example, and France was
guided into it by Cousin. Forgetful of national calamity and of personal
wrong, he looked to Prussia as affording the best example of an
organized system of national education; and he was persuaded that "to
carry back the education of Prussia into France afforded a nobler (if a
bloodless) triumph than the trophies of Austerlitz and Jena." In the
summer of 1831, commissioned by the government, he visited Frankfort and
Saxony, and spent some time in Berlin. The result was a series of
reports to the minister, afterwards published as _Rapport sur l'etat de
l'instruction publique dans quelques pays de l'Allemagne et
particulierement en Prusse_. (Compare also _De l'instruction publique en
Hollande_, 1837.) His views were readily accepted on his return to
France, and soon afterwards through his influence there was passed the
law of primary instruction. (See his _Expose des motifs et projet de loi
sur l'instruction primaire, presentes a la chambre des deputes, seance
du 2 janvier 1833_.)
In the words of the _Edinburgh Review_ (July 1833), these documents
"mark an epoch in the progress of national education, and are directly
conducive to results important not only to France but to Europe." The
_Report_ was translated into English by Mrs Sarah Austin in 1834. The
translation was frequently reprinted in the United States of America.
The legislatures of New Jersey and Massachusetts distributed it in the
schools at the expense of the states. Cousin remarks that, among all the
literary distinctions which he had received, "None has touched me more
than the title of foreign member of the American Institute for
Education." To the enlightened views of the ministries of Guizot and
Thiers under the citizen-king, and to the zeal and ability of Cousin in
the work of organization, France owes what is best in her system of
primary education,--a national interest which had been neglected under
the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration (see _Expose_, p. 17). In
the first two years of the reign of Louis Philippe more was done for the
education of the people than had been either sought or accomplished in
all the history of France. In defence of university studies he stood
manfully forth in the chamber of peers in 1844, against the clerical
party on the one hand and the levelling or Philistine party on the
other. His speeches on this occasion were published in a tractate
_Defense de l'universite et de la philosophie_ (1844 and 1845).
Philosophical writings.
This period of official life from 1830 to 1848 was spent, so far as
philosophical study was concerned, in revising his former lectures and
writings, in maturing them for publication or reissue, and in research
into certain periods of the history of philosophy. In 1835 appeared _De
la Metaphysique d'Aristote, suivi d'un essai de traduction des deux
premiers livres_; in 1836, _Cours de philosophie professe a la faculte
des lettres pendant l'annee 1818_, and _Ouvrages inedits d'Abelard_.
This _Cours de philosophie_ appeared later in 1854 as _Du vrai, du beau,
et du bien_. From 1825 to 1840 appeared _Cours de l'histoire de la
philosophie_, in 1829 _Manuel de l'histoire de la philosophie de
Tennemann_, translated from the German. In 1840-1841 we have _Cours
d'histoire de la philosophie morale au XVIII^e siecle_ (5 vols.). In
1841 appeared his edition of the _OEuvres philosophiques de
Maine-de-Biran_; in 1842, _Lecons de philosophie sur Kant_ (Eng. trans.
A. G. Henderson, 1854), and in the same year _Des Pensees de Pascal_.
The _Nouveaux fragments_ were gathered together and republished in 1847.
Later, in 1859, appeared _Petri Abaelardi Opera_.
Literary studies.
During this period Cousin seems to have turned with fresh interest to
those literary studies which he had abandoned for speculation under the
influence of Laromiguiere and Royer-Collard. To this renewed interest we
owe his studies of men and women of note in France in the 17th century.
As the results of his work in this line, we have, besides the _Des
Pensees de Pascal_, 1842, _Etudes sur les femmes et la societe du XVII^e
siecle_, 1853. He has sketched Jacqueline Pascal (1844), Madame de
Longueville (1853), the marquise de Sable (1854), the duchesse de
Chevreuse (1856), Madame de Hautefort (1856).
When the reign of Louis Philippe came to a close through the opposition
of his ministry, with Guizot at its head, to the demand for electoral
reform and through the policy of the Spanish marriages, Cousin, who was
opposed to the government on these points, lent his sympathy to
Cavaignac and the Provisional government. He published a pamphlet
entitled _Justice et charite_, the purport of which showed the
moderation of his political views. It was markedly anti-socialistic. But
from this period he passed almost entirely from public life, and ceased
to wield the personal influence which he had done during the preceding
years. After the _coup d'etat_ of the 2nd of December, he was deprived
of his position as permanent member of the superior council of public
instruction. From Napoleon and the Empire he stood aloof. A decree of
1852 placed him along with Guizot and Villemain in the rank of honorary
professors. His sympathies were apparently with the monarchy, under
certain constitutional safeguards. Speaking in 1853 of the political
issues of the spiritual philosophy which he had taught during his
lifetime, he says,--"It conducts human societies to the true republic,
that dream of all generous souls, which in our time can be realized in
Europe only by constitutional monarchy."[2]
During the last years of his life he occupied a suite of rooms in the
Sorbonne, where he lived simply and unostentatiously. The chief feature
of the rooms was his noble library, the cherished collection of a
lifetime. He died at Cannes on the 13th of January 1867, in his
sixty-fifth year. In the front of the Sorbonne, below the lecture rooms
of the faculty of letters, a tablet records an extract from his will, in
which he bequeaths his noble and cherished library to the halls of his
professorial work and triumphs.
_Philosophy._--There are three distinctive points in Cousin's
philosophy. These are his method, the results of his method, and the
application of the method and its results to history,--especially to the
history of philosophy. It is usual to speak of his philosophy as
eclecticism. It is eclectic only in a secondary and subordinate sense.
All eclecticism that is not self-condemned and inoperative implies a
system of doctrine as its basis,--in fact, a criterion of truth.
Otherwise, as Cousin himself remarks, it is simply a blind and useless
syncretism. And Cousin saw and proclaimed from an early period in his
philosophical teaching the necessity of a system on which to base his
eclecticism. This is indeed advanced as an illustration or confirmation
of the truth of his system,--as a proof that the facts of history
correspond to his analysis of consciousness. These three points--the
method, the results, and the philosophy of history--are with him
intimately connected; they are developments in a natural order of
sequence. They become in practice Psychology, Ontology and Eclecticism
in history.
Method.
First, as to method. On no point has Cousin more strongly insisted than
the importance of method in philosophy. That which he adopts, and the
necessity of which he so strongly proclaims, is the ordinary one of
observation, analysis and induction. This observational method Cousin
regards as that of the 18th century,--the method which Descartes began
and abandoned, and which Locke and Condillac applied, though
imperfectly, and which Reid and Kant used with more success, yet not
completely. He insists that this is the true method of philosophy as
applied to consciousness, in which alone the facts of experience appear.
But the proper condition of the application of the method is that it
shall not through prejudice of system omit a single fact of
consciousness. If the authority of consciousness is good in one
instance, it is good in all. If not to be trusted in one, it is not to
be trusted in any. Previous systems have erred in not presenting the
facts of consciousness, i.e. consciousness itself, in their totality.
The observational method applied to consciousness gives us the science
of psychology. This is the basis and the only proper basis of ontology
or metaphysics--the science of being--and of the philosophy of history.
To the observation of consciousness Cousin adds induction as the
complement of his method, by which he means inference as to reality
necessitated by the data of consciousness, and regulated by certain laws
found in consciousness, viz. those of reason. By his method of
observation and induction as thus explained, his philosophy will be
found to be marked off very clearly, on the one hand from the deductive
construction of notions of an absolute system, as represented either by
Schelling or Hegel, which Cousin regards as based simply on hypothesis
and abstraction, illegitimately obtained; and on the other, from that of
Kant, and in a sense, of Sir W. Hamilton, both of which in the view of
Cousin are limited to psychology, and merely relative or phenomenal
knowledge, and issue in scepticism so far as the great realities of
ontology are concerned. What Cousin finds psychologically in the
individual consciousness, he finds also spontaneously expressed in the
common sense or universal experience of humanity. In fact, it is with
him the function of philosophy to classify and explain universal
convictions and beliefs; but common-sense is not with him philosophy,
nor is it the instrument of philosophy; it is simply the material on
which the philosophical method works, and in harmony with which its
results must ultimately be found.
Results.
The three great results of psychological observation are Sensibility,
Activity or Liberty, and Reason.
These three facts are different in character, but are not found apart in
consciousness. Sensations, or the facts of the sensibility, are
necessary; we do not impute them to ourselves. The facts of reason are
also necessary, and reason is not less independent of the will than the
sensibility. Voluntary facts alone are marked in the eyes of
consciousness with the characters of imputability and personality. The
will alone is the person or _Me_. The me is the centre of the
intellectual sphere without which consciousness is impossible. We find
ourselves in a strange world, between two orders of phenomena which do
not belong to us, which we apprehend only on the condition of our
distinguishing ourselves from them. Further, we apprehend by means of a
light which does not come from ourselves. All light comes from the
reason, and it is the reason which apprehends both itself and the
sensibility which envelops it, and the will which it obliges but does
not constrain. Consciousness, then, is composed of these three integrant
and inseparable elements. But Reason is the immediate ground of
knowledge and of consciousness itself.
Spontaneity in will.
But there is a peculiarity in Cousin's doctrine of activity or freedom,
and in his doctrine of reason, which enters deeply into his system. This
is the element of spontaneity in volition and in reason. This is the
heart of what is new alike in his doctrine of knowledge and being.
Liberty or freedom is a generic term which means a cause or being
endowed with self-activity. This is to itself and its own development
its own ultimate cause. Free-will is so, although it is preceded by
deliberation and determination, i.e. reflection, for we are always
conscious that even after determination we are free to will or not to
will. But there is a primary kind of volition which has not reflection
for its condition, which is yet free and spontaneous. We must have
willed thus spontaneously first, otherwise we could not know, before our
reflective volition, that we could will and act. Spontaneous volition is
free as reflective, but it is the prior act of the two. This view of
liberty of will is the only one in accordance with the facts of
humanity; it excludes reflective volition, and explains the enthusiasm
of the poet and the artist in the act of creation; it explains also the
ordinary actions of mankind, which are done as a rule spontaneously and
not after reflective deliberation.
Impersonality of reason.
But it is in his doctrine of the Reason that the distinctive principle
of the philosophy of Cousin lies. The reason given to us by
psychological observation, the reason of our consciousness, is
impersonal in its nature. We do not make it; its character is precisely
the opposite of individuality; it is universal and necessary. The
recognition of universal and necessary principles in knowledge is the
essential point in psychology; it ought to be put first and emphasized
to the last that these exist, and that they are wholly impersonal or
absolute. The number of these principles, their enumeration and
classification, is an important point, but it is secondary to that of
the recognition of their true nature. This was the point which Kant
missed in his analysis, and this is the fundamental truth which Cousin
thinks he has restored to the integrity of philosophy by the method of
the observation of consciousness. And how is this impersonality or
absoluteness of the conditions of knowledge to be established? The
answer is in substance that Kant went wrong in putting necessity first
as the criterion of those laws. This brought them within the sphere of
reflection, and gave as their guarantee the impossibility of thinking
them reversed; and led to their being regarded as wholly relative to
human intelligence, restricted to the sphere of the phenomenal,
incapable of revealing to us substantial reality--necessary, yet
subjective. But this test of necessity is a wholly secondary one; these
laws are not thus guaranteed to us; they are each and all given to us,
given to our consciousness, in an act of spontaneous apperception or
apprehension, immediately, instantaneously, in a sphere above the
reflective consciousness, yet within the reach of knowledge. And "all
subjectivity with all reflection expires in the spontaneity of
apperception. The reason becomes subjective by relation to the voluntary
and free self; but in itself it is impersonal; it belongs not to this or
to that self in humanity; it belongs not even to humanity. We may say
with truth that nature and humanity belong to it, for without its laws
both would perish."
Laws of reason.
But what is the number of those laws? Kant reviewing the enterprise of
Aristotle in modern times has given a complete list of the laws of
thought, but it is arbitrary in classification and may be legitimately
reduced. According to Cousin, there are but two primary laws of thought,
that of causality and that of substance. From these flow naturally all
the others. In the order of nature, that of substance is the first and
causality second. In the order of acquisition of our knowledge,
causality precedes substance, or rather both are given us in each other,
and are contemporaneous in consciousness.
These principles of reason, cause and substance, given thus
psychologically, enable us to pass beyond the limits of the relative and
subjective to objective and absolute reality,--enable us, in a word, to
pass from psychology, or the science of knowledge, to ontology or the
science of being. These laws are inextricably mixed in consciousness
with the data of volition and sensation, with free activity and fatal
action or impression, and they guide us in rising to a personal being, a
self or free cause, and to an impersonal reality, a not-me--nature, the
world of force--lying out of us, and modifying us. As I refer to myself
the act of attention and volition, so I cannot but refer the sensation
to some cause, necessarily other than myself, that is, to an external
cause, whose existence is as certain for me as my own existence, since
the phenomenon which suggests it to me is as certain as the phenomenon
which had suggested my reality, and both are given in each other. I thus
reach an objective impersonal world of forces which corresponds to the
variety of my sensations. The relation of these forces or causes to each
other is the order of the universe.
The infinite or absolute.
But these two forces, the me and the not-me, are reciprocally
limitative. As reason has apprehended these two simultaneous phenomena,
attention and sensation, and led us immediately to conceive the two
sorts of distinct causes, correlative and reciprocally finite, to which
they are related, so, from the notion of this limitation, we find it
impossible under the same guide not to conceive a supreme cause,
absolute and infinite, itself the first and last cause of all. This is
relatively to self and not-self what these are to their proper effects.
This cause is self-sufficient, and is sufficient for the reason. This is
God; he must be conceived under the notion of cause, related to humanity
and the world. He is absolute substance only in so far as he is absolute
cause, and his essence lies precisely in his creative power. He thus
creates, and he creates necessarily.
Charge of Pantheism.
This theodicy of Cousin laid him open obviously enough to the charge of
pantheism. This he repels, and his answer may be summed up as follows.
Pantheism is properly the deification of the law of phenomena, the
universe God. But I distinguish the two finite causes self and not-self
from each other and from the infinite cause. They are not mere
modifications of this cause or properties, as with Spinoza,--they are
free forces having their power or spring of action in themselves, and
this is sufficient for our idea of independent finite reality. I hold
this, and I hold the relation of these as effects to the one supreme
cause. The God I plead for is neither the deity of Pantheism, nor the
absolute unity of the Eleatics, a being divorced from all possibility of
creation or plurality, a mere metaphysical abstraction. The deity I
maintain is creative, and necessarily creative. The deity of Spinoza and
the Eleatics is a mere substance, not a cause in any sense. As to the
necessity under which Deity exists of acting or creating, this is the
highest form of liberty, it is the freedom of spontaneity, activity
without deliberation. His action is not the result of a struggle between
passion and virtue. He is free in an unlimited manner; the purest
spontaneity in man is but the shadow of the freedom of God. He acts
freely but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of being able to
choose the opposite part. He cannot deliberate or will as we do. His
spontaneous action excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of will
and the mechanical operation of necessity.
History of philosophy.
The elements found in consciousness are also to be found in the history
of humanity and in the history of philosophy. In external nature there
are expansion and contraction which correspond to spontaneity and
reflection. External nature again in contrast with humanity expresses
spontaneity; humanity expresses reflection. In human history the East
represents the spontaneous stage; the Pagan and Christian world
represent stages of reflection.
This was afterwards modified, expanded and more fully expressed by
saying that humanity in its universal development has three principal
moments. First, in the spontaneous stage, where reflection is not yet
developed, and art is imperfect, humanity has thought only of the
immensity around it. It is preoccupied by the infinite. Secondly, in the
reflective stage, mind has become an object to itself. It thus knows
itself explicitly or reflectively. Its own individuality is now the only
or at least the supreme thing. This is the moment of the finite.
Thirdly, there comes an epoch in which the self or me is subordinated.
Mind realizes another power in the universe. The finite and the infinite
become two real correlatives in the relation of cause and product. This
is the third and highest stage of development, the relation of the
finite and the infinite. As philosophy is but the highest expression of
humanity, these three moments will be represented in its history. The
East typifies the infinite, Greece the finite or reflective epoch, the
modern era the stage of relation or correlation of infinite and finite.
In theology, the dominant philosophical idea of each of these epochs
results in pantheism, polytheism, theism. In politics we have in
correspondence also with the idea, monarchy, democracy,
constitutionalism.
Eclecticism.
Eclecticism thus means the application of the psychological method to
the history of philosophy. Confronting the various systems co-ordinated
as sensualism, idealism, scepticism, mysticism, with the facts of
consciousness, the result was reached "that each system expresses an
order of phenomena and ideas, which is in truth very real, but which is
not alone in consciousness, and which at the same time holds an almost
exclusive place in the system; whence it follows that each system is not
false but incomplete, and that in re-uniting all incomplete systems, we
should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of
consciousness." Philosophy, as thus perfected, would not be a mere
aggregation of systems, as is ignorantly supposed, but an integration of
the truth in each system after the false or incomplete is discarded.
Relations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel.
Such is the system in outline. The historical position of the system
lies in its relations to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Cousin was opposed
to Kant in asserting that the unconditioned in the form of infinite or
absolute cause is but a mere unrealizable tentative or effort on the
part of the mind, something different from a mere negation, yet not
equivalent to a positive thought. With Cousin the absolute as the ground
of being is grasped positively by the intelligence, and it renders all
else intelligible; it is not as with Kant a certain hypothetical or
regulative need.
With Schelling again Cousin agrees in regarding this supreme ground of
all as positively apprehended, and as a source of development, but he
utterly repudiates Schelling's method. The intellectual intuition either
falls under the eye of consciousness, or it does not. If not, how do you
know it and its object which are identical? If it does, it comes within
the sphere of psychology; and the objections to it as thus a relative,
made by Schelling himself, are to be dealt with. Schelling's
intellectual intuition is the mere negation of knowledge.
Again the pure being of Hegel is a mere abstraction,--a hypothesis
illegitimately assumed, which he has nowhere sought to vindicate. The
very point to be established is the possibility of reaching being per se
or pure being; yet in the Hegelian system this is the very thing assumed
as a starting-point. Besides this, of course, objections might be made
to the method of development, as not only subverting the principle of
contradiction, but as galvanizing negation into a means of advancing or
developing the whole body of human knowledge and reality. The
intellectual intuition of Schelling, as above consciousness, the pure
being of Hegel, as an empty abstraction, unvindicated, illegitimately
assumed, and arbitrarily developed, are equally useless as bases of
metaphysics. This led Cousin, still holding by essential knowledge of
being, to ground it in an analysis of consciousness,--in psychology.
The absolute or infinite--the unconditioned ground and source of all
reality--is yet apprehended by us as an immediate datum or reality; and
it is apprehended in consciousness--under its condition, that, to wit,
of distinguishing subject and object, knower and known. The doctrine of
Cousin was criticized by Sir W. Hamilton in the _Edinburgh Review_ of
1829, and it was animadverted upon about the same time by Schelling.
Hamilton's objections are as follows. The correlation of the ideas of
infinite and finite does not necessarily imply their correality, as
Cousin supposes; on the contrary, it is a presumption that finite is
simply positive and infinite negative of the same--that the finite and
infinite are simply contradictory relatives. Of these "the positive
alone is real, the negative is only an abstraction of the other, and in
the highest generality even an abstraction of thought itself." A study
of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling
criticism of Hamilton's objection which has been set afloat recently,
that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a
foregone knowledge of it. How can you deny the reality of that which you
do not know? The answer to this is that in the case of contradictory
statements--A and not A--the latter is a mere negation of the former,
and posits nothing; and the negation of a notion with positive
attributes, as the finite, does not extend beyond abolishing the given
attributes as an object of thought. The infinite or non-finite is not
necessarily known, ere the finite is negated, or in order to negate it;
all that needs be known is the finite itself; and the contradictory
negation of it implies no positive. Non-organized may or may not
correspond to a positive--i.e. an object or notion with qualities
contradictory of the organized; but the mere sublation of the organized
does not posit it, or suppose that it is known beforehand, or that
anything exists corresponding to it. This is one among many flaws in the
Hegelian dialectic, and it paralyzes the whole of the _Logic_. Secondly,
the conditions of intelligence, which Cousin allows, necessarily exclude
the possibility of knowledge of the absolute--they are held to be
incompatible with its unity. Here Schelling and Hamilton argue that
Cousin's absolute is a mere relative. Thirdly, it is objected that in
order to deduce the conditioned, Cousin makes his absolute a relative;
for he makes it an absolute cause, i.e. a cause existing absolutely
under relation. As such it is necessarily inferior to the sum total of
its effects, and dependent for reality on these--in a word, a mere
potence or becoming. Further, as a theory of creation, it makes creation
a necessity, and destroys the notion of the divine. Cousin made no reply
to Hamilton's criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton's doctrine
necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and
logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and
uncertainty into its highest sphere--theodicy.
Criticism of his philosophy. Impersonality of reason.
The attempt to render the laws of reason or thought impersonal by
professing to find them in the sphere of spontaneous apperception, and
above reflective necessity, can hardly be regarded as successful. It may
be that we first of all primitively or spontaneously affirm cause,
substance, time, space, &c., in this way. But these are still in each
instance given us as realized in a particular form. In no single act of
affirmation of cause or substance, much less in such a primitive act, do
we affirm the universality of their application. We might thus get
particular instances or cases of these laws, but we could never get the
laws themselves in their universality, far less absolute impersonality.
And as they are not supposed to be mere generalizations from experience,
no amount of individual instances of the application of any one of them
by us would give it a true universality. The only sure test we have of
their universality in our experience is the test of their reflective
necessity. We thus after all fall back on reflection as our ground for
their universal application; mere spontaneity of apprehension is futile;
their universality is grounded in their necessity, not their necessity
in their universality. How far and in what sense this ground of
necessity renders them personal are of course questions still to be
solved.
But if these three correlative facts are immediately given, it seems to
be thought possible by Cousin to vindicate them in reflective
consciousness. He seeks to trace the steps which the reason has
spontaneously and consciously, but irreflectively, followed. And here
the question arises--Can we vindicate in a reflective or mediate process
this spontaneous apprehension of reality?
The self is found to be a cause of force, free in its action, on the
ground that we are obliged to relate the volition of consciousness to
the self as its cause, and its ultimate cause. It is not clear from the
analysis whether the self is immediately observed as an acting or
originating cause, or whether reflection working on the principle of
causality is compelled to infer its existence and character. If self is
actually so given, we do not need the principle of causality to infer
it; if it is not so given, causality could never give us either the
notion or the fact of self as a cause or force, far less as an ultimate
one. All that it could do would be to warrant a cause of some sort, but
not this or that reality as the cause. And further, the principle of
causality, if fairly carried out, as universal and necessary, would not
allow us to stop at personality or will as the ultimate cause of its
effect--volition. Once applied to the facts at all, it would drive us
beyond the first antecedent or term of antecedents of volition to a
still further cause or ground--in fact, land us in an infinite regress
of causes.
The same criticism is even more emphatically applicable to the influence
of a not-self, or world of forces, corresponding to our sensations, and
the cause of them. Starting from sensation as our basis, causality could
never give us this, even though it be allowed that sensation is
impersonal to the extent of being independent of our volition. Causality
might tell us that a cause there is of sensation somewhere and of some
sort; but that this cause is a force or sum of forces, existing in
space, independently of us, and corresponding to our sensations, it
could never tell us, for the simple reason that such a notion is not
supposed to exist in our consciousness. Causality cannot add to the
number of our notions,--cannot add to the number of realities we know.
All it can do is to necessitate us to think that a cause there is of a
given change, but _what_ that cause is it cannot of itself inform us, or
even suggest to us, beyond implying that it must be adequate to the
effect. Sensation might arise, for aught we know, so far as causality
leads us, not from a world of forces at all, but from a will like our
own, though infinitely more powerful, acting upon us, partly furthering
and partly thwarting us. And indeed such a supposition is, with the
principle of causality at work, within the limits of probability, as we
are already supposed to know such a reality--a will--in our own
consciousness. When Cousin thus set himself to vindicate those points by
reflection, he gave up the obvious advantage of his other position that
the realities in question are given us in immediate and spontaneous
apprehension. The same criticism applies equally to the inference of an
absolute cause from the two limited forces which he names self and
not-self. Immediate spontaneous apperception may seize this supreme
reality; but to vindicate it by reflection as an inference on the
principle of causality is impossible. This is a mere paralogism; we can
never infer either absolute or infinite from relative or finite.
The truth is that Cousin's doctrine of the spontaneous apperception of
impersonal truth amounts to little more than a presentment in
philosophical language of the ordinary convictions and beliefs of
mankind. This is important as a preliminary stage, but philosophy
properly begins when it attempts to co-ordinate or systematize those
convictions in harmony, to conciliate apparent contradiction and
opposition, as between the correlative notions of finite and infinite,
the apparently conflicting notions of personality and infinitude, self
and not-self; in a word, to reconcile the various sides of consciousness
with each other. And whether the laws of our reason are the laws of all
intelligence and being--whether and how we are to relate our
fundamental, intellectual and moral conceptions to what is beyond our
experience, or to an infinite being--are problems which Cousin cannot be
regarded as having solved. These are in truth the outstanding problems
of modern philosophy.
Volition.
Cousin's doctrine of spontaneity in volition can hardly be said to be
more successful than his impersonality of the reason through spontaneous
apperception. Sudden, unpremeditated volition may be the earliest and
the most artistic, but it is not the best. Volition is essentially a
free choice between alternatives, and that is best which is most
deliberate, because it is most rational. Aristotle touched this point in
his distinction between [Greek: boulesis] and [Greek: proairesis]. The
sudden and unpremeditated wish represented by the former is wholly
inferior in character to the free choice of the latter, guided and
illumined by intelligence. In this we can deliberately resolve upon what
is in our power; in that we are subject to the vain impulse of wishing
the impossible. Spontaneity is pleasing, sometimes beautiful, but it is
not in this instance the highest quality of the thing to be obtained.
That is to be found in a guiding and illumining reflective activity.
General estimate.
Eclecticism is not open to the superficial objection of proceeding
without a system or test in determining the complete or incomplete. But
it is open to the objection of assuming that a particular analysis of
consciousness has reached all the possible elements in humanity and in
history, and all their combinations. It may be asked, Can history have
that which is not in the individual consciousness? In a sense not; but
our analysis may not give all that is there, and we ought not at once to
impose that analysis or any formula on history. History is as likely to
reveal to us in the first place true and original elements, and
combinations of elements in man, as a study of consciousness. Besides,
the tendency of applying a formula of this sort to history is to assume
that the elements are developed in a certain regular or necessary order,
whereas this may not at all be the case; but we may find at any epoch
the whole mixed, either crossing or co-operative, as in the
consciousness of the individual himself. Further, the question as to how
these elements may possibly have grown up in the general consciousness
of mankind is assumed to be non-existent or impossible.
It was the tendency of the philosophy of Cousin to outline things and to
fill up the details in an artistic and imaginative interest. This is
necessarily the case, especially in the application to history of all
formulas supposed to be derived either from an analysis of
consciousness, or from an abstraction called pure thought. Cousin was
observational and generalizing rather than analytic and discriminating.
His search into principles was not profound, and his power of rigorous
consecutive development was not remarkable. He left no distinctive
permanent principle of philosophy. But he left very interesting
psychological analyses, and several new, just, and true expositions of
philosophical systems, especially that of Locke and the philosophers of
Scotland. He was at the same time a man of impressive power, of rare and
wide culture, and of lofty aim,--far above priestly conception and
Philistine narrowness. He was familiar with the broad lines of nearly
every system of philosophy ancient and modern. His eclecticism was the
proof of a reverential sympathy with the struggles of human thought to
attain to certainty in the highest problems of speculation. It was
eminently a doctrine of comprehension and of toleration. In these
respects it formed a marked and valuable contrast to the arrogance of
absolutism, to the dogmatism of sensationalism, and to the doctrine of
church authority, preached by the theological school of his day. His
spirit, while it influenced the youth of France, saved them from these
influences. As an educational reformer, as a man of letters and
learning, who trod "the large and impartial ways of knowledge," and who
swayed others to the same paths, as a thinker influential alike in the
action and the reaction to which he led, Cousin stands out conspicuously
among the memorable Frenchmen of the 19th century.
Sir W. Hamilton (_Discussions_, p. 541), one of his most resolute
opponents, described Cousin as "A profound and original thinker, a lucid
and eloquent writer, a scholar equally at home in ancient and in modern
learning, a philosopher superior to all prejudices of age or country,
party or profession, and whose lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under
every form of opinion, traces its unity even through the most hostile
systems."
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J. Barthelemy St Hilaire, _V. Cousin, sa vie et sa
correspondence_ (3 vols., Paris, 1895); H. Hoffding, _Hist. of Mod.
Phil._ ii. 311 (Eng. trans., 1900); C. E. Fuchs, _Die Philosophie
Victor Cousins_ (Berlin, 1847); J. Alaux, _La Philos. de M. Cousin_
(Paris, 1864); P. Janet, _Victor Cousin et son oeuvre_ (Paris,
1885); Jules Simon, _V. Cousin_ (1887); Adolphe Franck, _Moralistes et
philosophes_ (1872); J. P. Damiron, _Souvenirs de vingt ans
d'enseignement_ (Paris, 1859); H. Taine in _Les Philosophes_ (Paris,
1868), pp. 79-202. (J. V.; X.)